


Tarnished Souls

by DeepWatersWaiting



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dorian Doesn't Destroy the Painting, Immortal Dorian Gray, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Modern Era, Panic Attacks, Reincarnated Basil Hallward, Reincarnation, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:20:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeepWatersWaiting/pseuds/DeepWatersWaiting
Summary: He stands beside an easel on the corner street, apart from the crowd in his own bubble of space with his paints on a little table beside him, a stack of easels leaning against it and a sign advertising portrait painting ten euros a canvas on his other side, and my heart seizes in my chest at the sight of him, my breathing stilling. It is impossible, a miracle, but the artist is as familiar to me as the dearest of friends, with the mousey hair and calm, genial smile that seems always to hide some secret understanding behind it, with the quiet, reserved stoop to his shoulders and the sparkle to his hazel eyes, and there is no denying it, despite the darkest whispers in my mind that reassure me that this cannot be happening- Basil Hallward stands with paint splatters on his apron, and on his fingers, a hundred odd years after his death.In Paris, Dorian runs into a friend he thought he would never see again.
Relationships: Dorian Gray/Basil Hallward
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Tarnished Souls

**Author's Note:**

> **disclaimer.**  
>  Everything belongs to Oscar Wilde.
> 
>  **additional notes.**  
>  After the heartbreak that was the ending of Dorian Gray, I decided that a slightly happier ending for Basil- and Dorian I suppose- was in order to get rid of the heartbreak of seeing where all the characters ended up at the end of the book. Paris, reincarnation and portraits were the result of this.

January 4th, 2015

* * *

I slouch silently from the little Parisian coffee shop, gloved hands shoved deep in the pockets of my winter coat and my head ducked against the brisk wind that whirls unrepentantly through the narrow street, hearing the cheerful twinkle of the bell behind me as the café door knocks it on its way shut. The noise is quiet and otherwise inoffensive, meant only to welcome customers in the softest of sounds, but the ignorant joy in its tone sets my teeth on edge and ever-present fury at the world gnawing afresh at my soul, as if it mocks me and laughs at the pathetic picture I paint silhouetted against the slanting sheet of pounding rain. It's ridiculous really, how paranoid a night's drinking can make you, how many qualities the ache of a hangover can give inanimate objects, but the glare I cast over my shoulder at the merry gold bell is dark and irritable.

Really, it only serves as a reminder that I shouldn't having taken to drink last night. Pressure pulses like a second heartbeat at my temples, a vice gripping my skull and squeezing until I feel as though I could cry out for the pain of it. The black coffee at the café helped, easing a little of the headache, and the biting cold begins to cast away the rest of it. If only it could remove the shadow on _it_ , on the portrait that still lurks at the peripheral of my thoughts, but I doubt even a gallon of bleach could do so; I shudder to thinnk of what changes will have been wrought on my portrait when I return and beneath my darkening turn of mood, my eyes seem to pick out and dwell upon every blemish that defaces the walls and streets of Paris.

The dirt.

The graffiti.

The rubbish.

As always, after a few months of extended stay in the luxurious apartments I have rented out by the Seine, the city loses its brash lustre piece by piece, modernisation chipping away at the soul of the place to leave it an empty husk of its former spirit, no matter what mirage of glory the new year brings rolling in with it. My feet itch with the urge to make my way, here and now, for the nearest train station so that I can travel again. It'll be time to move on soon, so that those used to me here in France won't notice the lines that don't appear on my face or the grey that will never pepper my hair- back to the quiet of Oxford perhaps, or maybe London, where my heart rests a little easier at night. Rests a little easier even if it yearns for older times found only historical dramas and textbooks sequestered away in the dusty corners of libraries.

_If I have a heart..._

Commuters bustle around me, dressed smartly in sharp suits with clean edges and clutching briefcases tight to their sides, an overwhelming ebb and flow of life that I do my best to melt into, just another lost man amongst hundreds of his kind with no destination in mind. Still, I feel their stares glued to me as they always feel to be these days, their appreciation and their curiosity strung around my neck like the rope of an accused man at the gallows, a threat and a comfort all bundled into one. I wonder if they can see the rot that stains my soul, the madness rooted so deep that I doubt it can ever be dispelled, the sin that I wear as a cloak to separate me from the world- was it not Harry who told me that danger attracted others like moths to an open flame? My tarnished soul draws their tarnished souls in on a string.

I will be glad to leave them behind when I board the Eurostar.

I remember what Paris was like in its younger days- more than anyone else here can say. The almost permanent layer of smog that hung low across the cobbles, the staccato clapping of hooves and carriage wheels ringing out in the darkness of night, the catcalls and raucous laughter that came spilling from pubs... I close my eyes sometimes and the atmosphere that had endeared the French capital to me pushes to the forefront of my mind, playing with every sense until I can smell, hear, feel and taste the old streets that had been a home away from home.

That's all gone now.

Harry and all my friends, my bitterest of enemies and my nameless conquests, my servants and my family. I am the last survivor of a dead age, tethered to a dying, broken world that exists in a perpetual state of cruelty and in the modern days of France, with people walking down pavements, mobile phones attached to their hands, and cars whizzing past on the road quick enough that their passage lifts up my hair and musses it across my forehead, I have never felt it as keenly as this. It tastes like heartbreak and death, a tragedy that I had once adored to read on the page and critique in spiteful tones the sentimentality attached to every tear shed by the protagonist whenever Harry and I met up, which was more frequently then I cared to admit. In this tragedy, _I_ am the protagonist.

Feverishly, before I truly know what I am doing, my feet carry me quicker and quicker through the masses, hands shoving as I fight my way through. Angry exclamations in rapid fire French ring out behind me, curses and complaints, but there is a roaring in my ears steadily building to reach its terrible crescendo, the raging of the ocean in all its untamed and feral wildness, and my chest heaves in shallow pants, awful gasps that worry me all the more when black spots begin to mas across my vision.

I hadn't expected this.

I hadn't expected for the panic to set in, prompted only by a slightly larger crowd than I tended to associate with. I hadn't expected for the drink to come back and affect me this badly, for it to drag me backward into old reminisces as harshly as it had. This hollow wretchedness, the lead in my limbs, had been absent for so long I had almost thought myself free of it, the feeling of being strangled and choked and having no room left to pull in even the smallest of breaths.

Then I see him.

He stands beside an easel on the corner street, apart from the crowd in his own bubble of space with his paints on a little table beside him, a stack of easels leaning against it and a sign advertising portrait painting ten euros a canvas on his other side, and my heart seizes in my chest at the sight of him, my breathing stilling. It is impossible, a miracle, but the artist is as familiar to me as the dearest of friends, with the mousey hair and calm, genial smile that seems always to hide some secret understanding behind it, with the quiet, reserved stoop to his shoulders and the sparkle to his hazel eyes, and there is no denying it, despite the darkest whispers in my mind that reassure me that this cannot be happening- Basil Hallward stands with paint splatters on his apron, and on his fingers, a hundred odd years after his death.

He is not the same as he was when I last saw, that much is glaringly obvious, no longing the terrible thing that had haunted my dreams for so long, pasty and white and still. He doesn't wear the old coats and suits that society dictated he must back then and there is no blood pouring in rivers of crimson of the gaping wound I afflicted to his neck. I can still feel this body contort away from me as he writhes in terror, each soft line hardening until the man had felt like rock beneath my murderous hands.

The smell of nitric acid still haunts me in the blackest swathes of night.

Catching my eye as I stand struck dumb and frozen, Basil smiles, self-consciously raising a hand as if to wipe away some dirt from his face, and the realisation strikes me like a bludgeon to the sternum, heavy and hard as it strikes me firmly in the chest.

_This is real. Basil is alive. I can go over and speak to him, apologise, build back our relationship, tell him all the things I didn't before..._

I wonder how his hair feels if I were to run my fingers through, how his lips would feel if I pressed mine against them, how wide his eyes would open if I went up to him now and told him that I was sorry, that I missed him so much it felt like a gouge carved into my heart, that I saw him in my dreams and wanted to confess my love to him in all the languages I had mastered and the ones I hadn't. I wonder how long it would take him to call the police on the madman harassing him in the centre of Paris. But dreams of the spirit and heart are not so easy to give up and my feet seem to ghost as I make my way across to him, the intangible connection that binds me to him seeming to strengthen with each step.

I killed him.

I called him a thing.

I watched him die and blamed it on his goodness.

I have a chance to make it up to him.

"Here for a portrait, sir?" He asks me with an almost quizzical glance when I make to his corner of the street, as though he recognises me from somewhere those he speaks as one would to a stranger, and his voice washes over me like the ocean, sweet as an angel even in the caressing language of the French, though I think I can hear the faintest tickle of a British accent in his words. "A miniature is ten euros but I can do five if you stay very, very still for me."

 _"Will you not sit for me, Dorian?"_ He had once said, pleading with the memory of studio fresh in his eyes.

"A deal," I reply with a grin, flinging myself backwards on to the little stool he has set out for customers, crossing my legs in the old position that was once the most natural position in the world for me and revelling in the light his stare brings, "if you will take me for coffee."

Perhaps I will stay in Paris a little longer.

* * *

finis.


End file.
